Chapter 5
Wheew, this one was difficult. If you’re interested, I uploaded apic of Hisana post BaH.
Their names are Ran and Fudo and they didn’t take the news well.
It’s been two hours since she explained, slowly and in small words, that Shisui is dead. Ran only froze before asserting in a brittle voice that, “Well, shinobi die, I guess” and then curling up into a ball. Fudo has refused to let go of Shisui’s shirt that he finally managed to free from of her bag, instead dragging it into Hisana’s lap and then flopping down on it. “We thought he must be,” he admits quietly. “But you never really believe it, you know? There’s never been anyone else, after all.”
She feels bad now, for never thinking that maybe someone was still waiting for Shisui. She simply assumed that everyone who would miss him was already dead. There must be more, Hisana realizes dimly. More Uchiha summons who never found out what happened to their masters. They would need to look for them. If only … to make sure they get into good hands in the end. Hisana gathers herself an arm full of skunk.
It feels a little weird, being responsible for them now just as much as they’re responsible for her. They’re their own people … animals, but the person they serve seems to be an integral part of who they are. According to Ran it’s not uncommon that some of them simply retire once their master is dead. No wonder Haru had such problems with his raccoons – he was probably even the one who killed their master. Hisana cards her fingers through Fudo’s fur, unsure what to do with them now that she has them. “Tell me about him,” she finally says. “I want to know him the way you knew him.”
Kakashi is appreciative for about five minutes before his brows furrow.
“I would have let you sign my contract,” he says and it sounds a bit like an accusation. Hisana chooses not to remind him that she’s not his student anymore. “I mean they work pretty well for tracking too,” he amends, “But …”
But they’re small. Their teeth are too small to latch onto an opponent like a dog and their claws are made for digging, not scratching like a cat’s. Obviously their spray is crippling, so it’s the perfect non-lethal take down, but scent-wise it’s also huge beacon for anyone in the vicinity. Not only can you find your target, everyone can find it. To be honest, she has no idea what they even do.
“Genjutsu,” Ran tells them, sounding rather self-satisfied. Team Eta starts. “Yes, yes, nobody ever expects that.”
“So what?” Tenzo enquires from a safe distance away. “You … wave your tail at them?” Hisana eyes the hypnotic pattern on Ran’s tail in contemplation. That’s too obvious, she thinks. Nobody is stupid enough so close to a skunk’s tail.
“If that’s what you want, stupid,” Fudo snorts. “We can do all the genjutsu. Ever.” His sister rolls her glittering, black eyes at him.
“You ever been sprayed by a skunk?” she asks, casting one of Kakashi’s wincing summons a knowing look. “If you are, you have other problems than wondering about illusions, let me tell you.”
“And then – bam!” Fudo wiggles his butt. “Insta-genjutsu. You look away, you’re dead. We’re good with all sorts of scent triggers. I got one word for you: pheromones.”
“That’s vicious,” Hisana laughs, watching her teamleader edge away in amusement.
“We’re also pretty good infiltrators,” Ran adds proudly before casting Fudo a vaguely annoyed look. “If we can keep it together for long enough.” He makes a face at her. As the two skunks descend into squabbles Hisana turns towards Kakashi.
“What do you say to a match? No spraying, no Sharingan.” They need to learn to work together – all of them. “If you’re too scared, I’m sure Tenzo would.” She bats her eyes at said man, watching in satisfaction how her teammate gamely gathers his things from the floor, ready to take Kakashi’s place. It always gives her little thrill being able to command anyone at all – even if it’s obviously thanks to that person’s goodwill. Tenzo likes her, she knows that much. At the beginning mostly because Kakashi picked her, and their teamleader was probably the first person who ever meant anything at all to Tenzo. But they’re … friends? Not quite, maybe; the age gap is too big for that. It’s the same thing that puts a certain distance between her and Anko.
Maybe he feels that he has to look out for her. Hisana isn’t sure, but he’s good company anyway. Few people make her feel truly safe, even inside Konoha’s impressive walls, but Kakashi and Tenzo are definitely two of them.
“Ok, if you insist,” Kakashi says in faux cheer, planting a hand on her neck and squeezing just enough to make it uncomfortable. If she were one of his dogs, Hisana thinks, he’d be shaking her now.
“Now, now,” Tenzo interjects, eyes fixed their teamleader’s hand with mild humor. “Maybe Hisana-san and I against you would be a better idea. We don’t want this to be over too quickly.”
The two of them are fast. Despite being almost blind, it seems impossible to hide from the skunk siblings’ noses and their excellent ears. And when Ran said they were good at genjutsu, she wasn’t kidding. Right now the skunk lady is wrapped around Hisana’s neck like a scarf and the only thing she can feel is her own body heat trapped under the heavy fur. Ran herself seems to weigh nothing, smell like nothing, and is completely invisible.
And then there’s something just as interesting.
Hisana watches in fascination as Kakashi throws a kunai at Fudo, who flattens to the ground until he’s nothing more than a black shadow crawling along the floor. He dodges weapon after weapon with quick, jerky movements before melting into the shade of a nearby tree like a ghost. Hisana and Tenzo circle their teamleader. Two of his ninken are out of commission, sprayed right in the face and passed out, but the rest are still in hiding. For all they know the pack could have them surrounded already, but more importantly, right now they have Kakashi surrounded. “You’re giving up, old man?” she drawls, unable to help herself. It’s so rare that they manage to corner him, even the two of them together.
“You’re so cruel to your old teacher,” he complains. “Have some respect.” And then his hand shoots forward. Chaos ensures.
Ran unfurls from Hisana’s neck, ready to jump into Kakashi’s face like an angry cat, but he already has her by the tail. A squawk, a scream – and then skunk spray hits Hisana square in the face. There’s a moment of profound silence in which she can only vaguely appreciate how Kakashi is wielding Ran like a machine gun before the smell really hits.
“Oh dear,” her taichou muses good-naturedly, “that’s quite the aroma.”
The night before graduation Sasuke is watching her warily. Hisana isn’t sure why; yes she’s a bit apprehensive about what’s to come, but when she said he’d have to fight her she didn’t mean that quite so literally. It’s not as if she’ll ask Iruka-sensei to fail him tomorrow.
“What is it?” she finally demands, fed up with his strange behavior. Sasuke slowly interlaces his fingers; a nervous habit that makes him look like a stern professor.
“When I pass tomorrow, I’ll be head of the clan,” he says quietly and – Oh. That’s pretty much the last thing she expected. Hisana nods, waiting for him to continue. “I … – what … do I do then?”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
Sasuke hesitates before throwing her a cautious look. In theory he’d get a seat in the council and he’d be able to officially command her as the only member of his clan. But Sasuke is twelve, so she suspects most of that will be pretty useless to him. He licks his lips nervously, fingers twitching on the arm of the couch.
“I think I want to sell the compound.”
Hisana freezes. Oh … wow. For one single heartbeat she’s sure that she can feel the gravity of the moment, the weight of her cousin’s decision.
She loves the boy, she really does, but as much as she keeps clinging to the hope that he’ll turn out better than canon Sasuke, it was always tinged with cynicism.
Of course something else will happen and then he’ll leave Konoha anyway. She’s fighting against fate after all, all by herself. Maybe she can soften the impact of the blow, prepare Sasuke, prepare everyone, so that the rest will go more smoothly … but she’s always assumed, with a certain sort of defeat, that he’ll leave in the end.
Even thought Hisana wants nothing more than to see him as someone to rely on, a partner, Sasuke has always been a hurdle to overcome. But this, this is the first concrete sign that maybe things will turn out all right. Canon Sasuke would have never parted with the compound. He clung to everything Uchiha, wallowed in his hate and loneliness and convinced himself that the empty memories were all he had. Her Sasuke however seems to have recognized the old district for what it is: A ball and chain that keeps him from moving on with his life.
She swallows thickly, fighting the urge to reach for his hand. “I think,” she finally says, “that’s a very good idea.”
He smiles at her.
Sasuke is lucky enough that his class is schedules pretty early on Monday morning. Hisana is tired as all hell – Ibiki and ensemble of the weirdest chuunin in all of Konoha kept her busy almost the entire weekend – but she gets up to go with him anyway.
“You don’t need to wait for me,” he says for probably the fourth time. She isn’t sure if he’s embarrassed by her or if it’s something else, but she’s not budging.
“Forget it,” Hisana yawns, thinking of poor Naruto who may or not may fail today. “I’m waiting right here for you.” He scowls a little, but in the end the bell rings and Sasuke has to bow to her will. There’s a gaggle of parents standing close by, doing the same thing as her, though in a much more embarrassing way. There’s cheek pinching and cooing and Hisana thinks she just saw one of the mothers giving her son a clap on the butt. She hopes Sasuke saw that – it could always be worse.
From the door Sakura waves enthusiastically at her before turning to hurry Sasuke along. She waves back a bit more subdued, wondering if any of Sakura’s parents came today. Somehow she hopes not; surely her father would at least congratulate the girl, but her mother might start a fight right here at the front steps. ‘Are you finally done now? Can you go back to acting like a normal person now?’ Haruno Sayuri’s voice echoes in Hisana’s head, snappish and condescending.
Naruto barrels into her, late but grinning like a loon.
“Nee-chan,” he cries, “I’m gonna be a ninja today, dattebayo!” He hugs her around the hips so hard, it lifts Hisana off her feet a little. And then he’s gone, not even waiting for any sort of answer.
A few of the parents watched their brief collision in astonishment. They’re not whispering yet, but that might be because they haven’t quite digested what just happened; Naruto is a whirlwind. Hisana fixes her eyes onto the most disgusted looking mother and stares her down. Once the woman breaks eye contact, averting her gaze to the floor with a frown, she moves on to the next one. After a while they seem to get the point – ‘I can see you staring, I don’t care’. She sincerely doubts that any of them are ninja themselves, though it’s hard to tell with crowds.
They don’t know who she is, Hisana realizes in amusement. It’s … the first time in a pretty long while that this happens. Maybe they’re wondering if her mother didn’t teach her not to associate with the boy. Or maybe they were considering warning her off. Hisana sits down on one of the benches to wait, taking up more space than she normally would. It’s something she learnt from watching Inuzuka Tsume. They pointedly ignore her.
It takes forty minutes before the first student comes busting through the door. It’s a boy, enthusiastically waving his new Konoha hitai-ate around. He throws himself at his father, who bellows out a laugh. It’s cute to watch and Hisana finds herself almost looking forward to seeing more of the new genin barreling into the school yard, but then the obnoxiousness starts. Not ten minutes after the boy and his parents left, hand in hand, that the first girl comes through the door. She poses dramatically with her headband and then all assembled mothers start squealing.
“Oh Fuki-chan!” the girl’s mother cries, “you look so cute! I knew you could do it – you’re such a clever girl.”
Aha, Hisana thinks vaguely. She knows Fuki! So the girl did pass the graduation exam. Ami, too, passes, and is greeted with an equal amount of yelling and misplaced enthusiasm. She’s not sure if these people really realize what they signed their children up for. Looking cute in a headband won’t help them at all. Peace time probably gave them the wrong idea about ninja, Hisana muses. ‘Peace spoils people.’ The sentiment feels oddly like something Danzo would say and she shies away from it uncomfortably.
That doesn’t make it any less true though.
Hyuuga Hinata garners no squeals when she emerges through the door. There are no Hyuuga present, just as there are no Yamanaka or Aburame here. Acing the graduation exam is sort of a foregone conclusion for them, so their parents patiently wait at home. The girl hurries past the gaggle of adults, disappearing around a corner without as much as a smile.
Sakura, too, gets no response, though probably more because her mother isn’t part of the gathered women; Hisana sincerely doubts that Haruno Sayuri would want anything to do with mothers who think it’s a good idea to send their daughters here. But Sakura ignores them, proudly lifting her hitai-ate for Hisana to see.
“I did it,” she breathes incredulously. “I’m a ninja! I’m an adult.” The last part sounds a little startled, as if she only just realized it.
“Yes,” Hisana agrees with a smile. “well done. The way you trained I’m not surprised at all.” Sakura beams at her and then ties the new headband into her hair.
“Looks cool?” she wonders, striking a pose.
“Looks great.”
Sasuke is one of the last children to finish. When he steps out of the Academy there are only a few parents left and Hisana’s butt has gone a little numb. A few of the mothers croon at him, but he resolutely ignores them, hitai-ate wrapped around his head as if it’s always been there. Nothing to see, people.
“Can we go now?” he grouches, uncomfortable with all the attention.
“Naruto,” she reminds him, pointedly not commenting on his success. If she touches him now while everyone is watching he’ll get angry.
“Dobe,” he sighs, as if the blonde is the root of all his troubles. Sasuke can’t linger too long or someone will come to hurry him along. Hisana considers sending him ahead but hesitates. She doesn’t want to make a big deal out his promotion, but just ignoring it and sending him home doesn’t sit well with her either. But then the door opens one last time and Naruto steps out.